For this crazy-busy third Monday in November, herewith a post from the archives, originally posted on April 3, 2017:
In the shadow of the National Palace: La Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América, the House of the First Printing Press in the Americas, Mexico City. Photo by C.M. Mayo, 2017.
…There is one more a pearl of a place that cannot go unmentioned in any discussion of our sister republic’s literary landscape…
From the Claustro de Sor Juana, in less than twenty minutes’ walk north and slightly east—weaving your way through the shoppers, touts, tourists, beggars, businessmen—honking cars and buses and motorbikes—and a skate-boarder or two—blaring music, freighters with their trolleys piled to toppling with boxes—don’t get run over by the pedicabs—and once at the Zócalo, wending around the Aztec dancers in feathers and ankle-rattles, the toothless shouter pumping his orange sign about SODOM Y GOMORRA MARIGUANA BODAS GAY, and an organ grinder, and to-ers and fro-ers of every age and size, you arrive, out of breath, at a squat, terracotta-colored three-story high building.
This is where the first book was printed in—no, not just in Mexico—then New Spain—but in the Americas. La Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América.
To step into the foyer of its museum and bookstore is to relax into an oasis of peace.
The uniformed guard hands me a pen to sign the guest book. It’s late afternoon; I am the third visitor for the day.
I take a gander at the exhibition of contemporary textile art—a few pieces reference one of Frida Kahlo’s drawings in the Casa Azul of a tentacled monster of paranoia, each limb tipped with a staring eye.
In the second gallery I find the replica of our continent’s first printing press soaking in sun from the window. The wooden contraption is taller than I am, but so spare, it occurs to me that it might serve to juice apples.
How my Mexican amigos scoffed at the auction of the Bay Psalm Book in 2013. Not about the record sum—14.2 million US dollars—for which that little book, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640, went to a private collector, but about the report in the international media that the Bay Psalm Book was “the first book printed in America.”
To Mexicans, America is the continent, not their sister republic. Mexico is part of the same continent, of course, and so the first book printed in America—or, as we estadounidenses prefer to say, the Americas—was
Breve y más compendiosa doctrina Cristiana en lengua Mexicana y Castellana (Brief and Most Comprehensive Christian Doctrine in Nahuátl and Spanish), printed right here, in Mexico City, in this building, in 1539.
Mexico beats out Massachusetts by 101 years! But this sinks to silliness. That printer in Cambridge, Massachussetts, was English, and the one in colonial Mexico City, a native of Lombardy named Giovanni Paoli, Hispanicized to “Juan Pablos.” The technology that found its way to the Americas with these printing pioneers—to the north, Protestants, to the south, Catholics, separated by religious schism and the whirlwinds of European politics, and that century, and moreover, by the staggering distance of desert, swamplands, oceanic buffalo-filled prairies, and sunless and unmapped forests—had one and the same root: the fifteenth-century workshop of a German goldsmith by the name of Johannes Gutenberg.
Gutenberg was inking his little pieces of movable type more than half a century before Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” and the indigenous on this continent chanced to hear the first stirrings of vaguest rumors and weird omens.
Still, 1539 is an early date indeed for that first book printed in the Americas: only eighteen years after the fall of Tenochitlán. Three years after Cabeza de Vaca’s miraculous arrival in Mexico City. Fray Sahagún was still a year away from launching the research that would result in the Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, or the Florentine Codex. The lodes that would turn Mexico into an industrial-scale silver exporter had not yet been discovered. The Manila Galleons, treasure ships bringing porcelain, spices, and silks from China to Acapulco, would not begin their annual crossings for another twenty-six years.
In England, Henry the VIII was between wives three and four. It would be sixty-eight more years until the first, disastrous English settlement at Jamestown. The Pilgrims who would land at Plymouth Rock? As a religious community they did not yet exist.
Tucked in the shade of the National Palace and a block east from Mexico’s cathedral, the Casa de la Primera Imprenta was built, it turns out, over the ruin of the Aztec Temple of Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror, trickster god of the night sky, of time, and of ancestral memory.
Aztec snake head on display, 2017.
Who knows what still lies beneath in the rubble? Dug up in the eighteenth century during a renovation, a gigantic Aztec stone snake head was, no doubt with a shudder of horror, reburied. But we live in a different time with a very different sensibility. In 1989 when renovations unearthed that same Aztec stone snake head—elegant with fangs, nostrils, scales, eyes the size of melons—it was carefully excavated and cleaned by archaeologists. This monumental sculpture, heritage of the nation, is now displayed atop a roped platform in the Casa de la Primera Imprenta’s Juan Pablos bookstore, surrounded by a shelf of fiction, a table of poetry, and a sign informing us that the Aztec snake head is carved from grey basalt and weighs approximately one and a half tons.
The Juan Pablos bookstore, named for that original printer Giovanni Paoli, retails books from the press of Mexico City’s Universidad Autónomo Metropolitana (UAM). Such are my interests du jour: I came away with a copy of the first Spanish translation of an eighteenth-century Italian’s journey to Mexico and the 2015 El territorio y sus representaciones.
A splendid and very important book: El territorio y sus representaciones by Luis Ignacio Sainz Chávez and Jorge Gonzlález Aragón Castellanos, winner of the 2016 Premio de Investigación. Published by the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico.
UPDATE: “Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla,” my long essay pon the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book, is now available in Kindle at amazon.com.
In the shadow of the National Palace: La Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América, the House of the First Printing Press in the Americas, Mexico City. Photo by C.M. Mayo, 2017.
…There is one more a pearl of a place that cannot go unmentioned in any discussion of our sister republic’s literary landscape…
From the Claustro de Sor Juana, in less than twenty minutes’ walk north and slightly east—weaving your way through the shoppers, touts, tourists, beggars, businessmen—honking cars and buses and motorbikes—and a skate-boarder or two—blaring music, freighters with their trolleys piled to toppling with boxes—don’t get run over by the pedicabs—and once at the Zócalo, wending around the Aztec dancers in feathers and ankle-rattles, the toothless shouter pumping his orange sign about SODOM Y GOMORRA MARIGUANA BODAS GAY, and an organ grinder, and to-ers and fro-ers of every age and size, you arrive, out of breath, at a squat, terracotta-colored three-story high building.
This is where the first book was printed in—no, not just in Mexico—then New Spain—but in the Americas. La Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América.
To step into the foyer of its museum and bookstore is to relax into an oasis of peace.
The uniformed guard hands me a pen to sign the guest book. It’s late afternoon; I am the third visitor for the day.
I take a gander at the exhibition of contemporary textile art—a few pieces reference one of Frida Kahlo’s drawings in the Casa Azul of a tentacled monster of paranoia, each limb tipped with a staring eye.
In the second gallery I find the replica of our continent’s first printing press soaking in sun from the window. The wooden contraption is taller than I am, but so spare, it occurs to me that it might serve to juice apples.
How my Mexican amigos scoffed at the auction of the Bay Psalm Book in 2013. Not about the record sum—14.2 million US dollars—for which that little book, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640, went to a private collector, but about the report in the international media that the Bay Psalm Book was “the first book printed in America.”
To Mexicans, America is the continent, not their sister republic. Mexico is part of the same continent, of course, and so the first book printed in America—or, as we estadounidenses prefer to say, the Americas—was
Breve y más compendiosa doctrina Cristiana en lengua Mexicana y Castellana (Brief and Most Comprehensive Christian Doctrine in Nahuátl and Spanish), printed right here, in Mexico City, in this building, in 1539.
Mexico beats out Massachusetts by 101 years! But this sinks to silliness. That printer in Cambridge, Massachussetts, was English, and the one in colonial Mexico City, a native of Lombardy named Giovanni Paoli, Hispanicized to “Juan Pablos.” The technology that found its way to the Americas with these printing pioneers—to the north, Protestants, to the south, Catholics, separated by religious schism and the whirlwinds of European politics, and that century, and moreover, by the staggering distance of desert, swamplands, oceanic buffalo-filled prairies, and sunless and unmapped forests—had one and the same root: the fifteenth-century workshop of a German goldsmith by the name of Johannes Gutenberg.
Gutenberg was inking his little pieces of movable type more than half a century before Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” and the indigenous on this continent chanced to hear the first stirrings of vaguest rumors and weird omens.
Still, 1539 is an early date indeed for that first book printed in the Americas: only eighteen years after the fall of Tenochitlán. Three years after Cabeza de Vaca’s miraculous arrival in Mexico City. Fray Sahagún was still a year away from launching the research that would result in the Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, or the Florentine Codex. The lodes that would turn Mexico into an industrial-scale silver exporter had not yet been discovered. The Manila Galleons, treasure ships bringing porcelain, spices, and silks from China to Acapulco, would not begin their annual crossings for another twenty-six years.
In England, Henry the VIII was between wives three and four. It would be sixty-eight more years until the first, disastrous English settlement at Jamestown. The Pilgrims who would land at Plymouth Rock? As a religious community they did not yet exist.
Tucked in the shade of the National Palace and a block east from Mexico’s cathedral, the Casa de la Primera Imprenta was built, it turns out, over the ruin of the Aztec Temple of Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror, trickster god of the night sky, of time, and of ancestral memory.
Aztec snake head on display, 2017.
Who knows what still lies beneath in the rubble? Dug up in the eighteenth century during a renovation, a gigantic Aztec stone snake head was, no doubt with a shudder of horror, reburied. But we live in a different time with a very different sensibility. In 1989 when renovations unearthed that same Aztec stone snake head—elegant with fangs, nostrils, scales, eyes the size of melons—it was carefully excavated and cleaned by archaeologists. This monumental sculpture, heritage of the nation, is now displayed atop a roped platform in the Casa de la Primera Imprenta’s Juan Pablos bookstore, surrounded by a shelf of fiction, a table of poetry, and a sign informing us that the Aztec snake head is carved from grey basalt and weighs approximately one and a half tons.
The Juan Pablos bookstore, named for that original printer Giovanni Paoli, retails books from the press of Mexico City’s Universidad Autónomo Metropolitana (UAM). Such are my interests du jour: I came away with a copy of the first Spanish translation of an eighteenth-century Italian’s journey to Mexico and the 2015 El territorio y sus representaciones.
A splendid and very important book: El territorio y sus representaciones by Luis Ignacio Sainz Chávez and Jorge Gonzlález Aragón Castellanos, winner of the 2016 Premio de Investigación. Published by the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico.
UPDATE: “Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla,” my long essay pon the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book, is now available in Kindle at amazon.com.
SOME NOTES & ETC ON PEYOTE FROM THE RESEARCH FOR MY BOOK IN-PROGRESS ON FAR WEST TEXAS >> Read about my book in-progress >> Listen in to the 20 “Marfa Mondays” podcasts (mainly interviews) posted to date >> View my maps of Far West Texas
Lophohora williamsii, or peyote
Far West Texas, an area approximately the size of West Virginia, includes a goodly patch of the territory that stretches deep into Mexico where peyote, or lophophora williamsii grows… oh so very… very… very… v-e-r-y… slowly. A runty, dull-gray spineless cactus with wispy white hairs, when found, peyote– an Anglicization of the original Nahautl name, peyotl— is usually growing in clusters. What certain indigenous peoples have done for an eon is slice off the tops– the “buttons”– and eat them. Calories and dietary fiber are not the point; apparently the taste is puckerlips nasty. But adepts claim that this humble-looking plant is no less than “the divine cactus,” and eaten as a sacrament, as “holy medicine,” it can bring one’s mind into a mystical realm where psychedelic visions can help one see across time and space and heal one’s thoughts about oneself and the cosmos. As one participant in a peyote ritual reported, echoing so many others, he found “profound gratitude for his life” as it was.
PEYOTE AND THE HUICHOLS The Huichols, who live in Mexico’s Sierra Madre, are the indigenous group best known for their peyote ritual.
PEYOTE IN FRAY BERNARDINO SAHAGUN’S GENERAL HISTORY OF THE THINGS OF NEW SPAIN The first known written mention of peyote is in Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagún’s Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, or General History of the Things of New Spain. The original 16th century manuscript, which contains 2,468 colorful illustrations and text in both Spanish and Nahuatl (the language spoken by the Aztecs phonetically transcribed using Latin), is also known as the Florentine Codex because it is in the Medicea Laurencziana Library in Florence, Italy.
>> To view the digitized manuscript which contains many intriguing and colorful illustrations, but, alas, not one of peyote, click here.
Pages from the Florentine Codex. This does not show peyote, alas.
“On him who eats it or drinks it, it takes effect like mushrooms. Also he sees many things which frighten one, or make one laugh. It affects him perhaps one day, perhaps two days, but likewise it abates. However, it harms one, troubles one, makes one besotted, takes effect on one.”
(By the way, you may have noticed that I never link to wikipedia, aka The Maoist Muddle, unless there is absolutely, but absolutely, nothing else and a link really would be better than none. FYI: When I checked wikipedia for this post on the Florentine Codex, the images shown were from the wrong book.)
PEYOTE ALSO MENTIONED IN DR. FERNANDO HERNANDEZ’S DE LA HISTORIA PLANTARUM NOVAE HISPANAE In 1570 King Felipe II sent medical doctor Fernándo Hernández (1514-1587) to New Spain to survey and report on the natural resources of the colony, including plants that might be put to medical uses. In his seven years in the Valley of Mexico (Mexico City and environs), Dr. Fernández documented a multitude of plants and a long-standing and elaborate tradition of Aztec herbal medicine. Dr. Fernández’s report on 3,000 plants, in various editions and languages, did not appear in print until some decades after his death.
“Hernández died before he could publish his Natural History, and the materials were placed in the Escorial, where they were extensively consulted, copied, abstracted, and translated by generations of scientists, medical specialists, and natural philosophers before they were destroyed by fire in 1671. Hernández’s work was still regarded as authoritative on a number of New World botanical topics as late as the nineteenth century, and his writings remain in use in popular form in Mexico today.”
I have yet to get my hands on a copy of The Mexican Treasury, but as quoted in Stewart’s Peyote Religion, in turn quoting a translation from a 1916 article by William E. Safford in Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, of peyote Dr. Fernández writes:
“Wonderful properties are attributed to this root… It causes those devouring it to be able to foresee and predict things; such, for instance, as whether the weather will remain favorable; or to discern who has stolen from them some utensils or anything else; and other things of like nature which the Chichimecs really believe them have found out. On which account this root scarcely issues forth but conceals itself in the ground, as if it did not wish to harm those who discover and eat it.”
FIRST IMAGE OF PEYOTE IN DR. HERNANDEZ’S MAGNUM OPUS, POSSIBLY… OR IN CURTIS’ BOTANICAL MAGAZINE — OR, POSSIBLY, IN THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT?
According to Stewart in Peyote Religion, the earliest known botanical illustration of peyote is from 1847, in Curtis’ Botanical Magazine. Hat tip to peyote and cactus blogger Lophophora, here is that very illustration, a lovely one, from the Botanicus Digital Library, Missouri Botanical Garden.
>> See the utterly fascinating 2013 paper by John D. Comegys, “The Voynich Manuscript: Aztec Herbal from New Spain.” Comegys
also notes some possible influence from the work of Dr. Hernández.
Comegy’s paper is fascinating read, and I highly recommended it for
anyone interested in rare book history, botany and/or Mexico.
From the Voynich Manuscript. Peyote? Possibly…
PEYOTE IN THE LOWER PECOS CANYONLANDS
The archaeological
record shows that peyote has been used many groups and many thousands
of years into the past in what is today northern Mexico and remote areas
along the Rio Grande on both sides of the US-Mexico border in Texas.
>>
For a novelist’s take on ancient peyote ritual in what is now the Lower
Pecos Canyonlands of Texas, see Mary S. Black’s Peyote Fire.
>>And
for more about the Lower Pecos Canyonlands and the magnificent rock art
there, see my guest-blog post for Mary S. Black here.
PEYOTE IN THE INQUISITION It is often said that the Mexican Inquisition focused on heretics, in particular conversos secretly practicing Judaism, but not indigenous. But the Inquisition did prosecute some indigenous and their use of peyote was often the issue.
Quoted in Stewart’s Peyote Religion (p. 20), in New Spain, in 16th and 17th century Catholic priests asked their parishioners:
Hast thou eaten the flesh of man? Hast thou eaten the peyote? Do you suck the blood of others? Do you adorn with flowers places where idols are kept?
(For
those not familiar with Mexican history, the first and third questions
might seem extreme. All I can say is, read the history.)
And, according to Stewart, in 1620 “the Inquisition was brought to bear against peyote.”
From American Anthropologist 44, 1942:
Irving A. Leonard, “Peyote and the Mexican Inquisition, 1620”
A quote from Leonard’s translation of a Spanish document:
“We, the Inquisitors against heretical perversity and apostasy in the City of Mexico, states and provinces of New Spain, New Galicia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Yucatan, Verapaz, Honduras, Philippine Islands, and their districts and jurisdictions, by virtue of apostolic authority, etc. Inasmuch as the use of the herb or root called Peyote has been introduced into these Provinces for the purpose of detecting thefts, of divining other happenings, and of foretelling future events, it is an act of superstition condemned as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic Faith.
“This is certain because neither the said herb or any other can possess the virtue or inherent quality of producing the effects claimed, nor can any cause the mental images, fantasies and hallucinations on which the above stated divinations are based. In these latter are plainly perceived the suggestion and intervention of the Devil, the real author of this vice, who first avails himself of the natural credulity of the Indians and their tendency to idolatry, and later strikes down many other persons too little disposed to fear God and of very little faith.
“Because of these efforts the said abuse has increased in strength and is indulged in with the frequency observed. As our duty imposes upon us the obligation to put a stop to this vice and to repair the harm and grave offense to God our Lord resulting from this practice, we, after consultation and conference with learned and right-minded persons, have decreed the issuing of the present edict to each of you, one and all, by which we admonish you and summon you to obedience by virtue of your holy submission [to the Church] and under penalty of anathema…and other pecuniary and corporal penalties within our discretion. We order that henceforth no person of whatever rank or social condition can or may make use of the said herb, Peyote, nor of any other kind under any name or appearance for the same or similar purposes, nor shall he make the Indians or any other person take them, with the further warning that disobedience to these decrees shall cause us, in addition to the penalties and condemnation above stated, to take action against such disobedient and recalcitrant persons as we would against those suspected of heresy to our Holy Catholic Faith.”
In Peyote Religion, Stewart also includes a map (p.23) of the Inquisition hearings that specifically involved peyote, which were concentrated in Mexico City and surroundings, as well as scattered around what is now the main trunk of the Mexican republic (excluding the Baja California and Yucatan peninsulas). There were two cases in Manila (Philippines) in 1617 and 1639, as well as a case in 1632 as far north as Santa Fe. The case in Santa Fe involved someone who took peyote in order to divine who had stolen some of his clothing.
(For those wondering, why Manila? The answer is the China trade, wherein Spanish merchants brought the Manila Galleon or Nao de China, across the ocean to Acapulco on the Pacific Coast, and from there, by burro train and tameme, brought the goods inland to Mexico City, parts elsewhere, and via Veracruz on the Gulf, across the Caribbean and Atlantic to Spain.)
Mexico City’s Palacio de la Inquisition is now the Museo de la Escuela de Medicina (part of Mexico’s National University). You can visit that museum, see the original building, and also an exhibition on cells used by the Inquisition.
The Inquisition on Youtube — who needs The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when you can surf around for all that infinitely more creative and toe-curlingly wicked gross-out stuff about Inquisition torture now on the Internet? For those with blood pressure issues, may I suggest Monty Python instead:
Mexico’s Archivo General de la Nación also has a large collection on the Inquisition. Alas, at the time of this writing the website was down.
PEYOTE IN THE NATIVE AMERICAN CHURCH North of the US-Mexico border– into Texas and beyond– peyote is used as a sacrament in the ritual of the Native American Church (NAC). Is this legal? Yes, for members of the NAC, and only after a century of bitter struggle, with the 1994 amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which protects the use of peyote in religious ceremonies. (Not that you, dear presumably non-Native American reader, can commence cultivating, selling, and scarfing down peyote as you please. For details, check out the current DEA status.)
Omer C. Stewart’s Peyote Religion: A History and Edward F. Anderson’s Peyote: The Divine Cactusboth provide a a history of the founding of the “peyote church” on Plains Indian and other Indian reservations in the United States.
THE PEYOTE RITUAL ARRIVES FROM MEXICO IN TEXAS AND OKLAHOMA
Chevato was a Lipan Apache born in northern Mexico who, long story short, became a member of the Mescalero Apaches roaming both Mexico and Texas, and later, of the Comanches on that tribe’s reservation in Oklahoma, thanks to his friendship with chief Quanah Parker.
His 2007 biography by his grandson, William Chebahtah, and Nancy McGown Minor, Chevato: The Story of the Apache Warrior Who Captured Hermann Lehman is both a major contribution to Comanche, Lipan Apache and Mescalero Apache history, and a gem-packed fascinating read– a must for any collection on the history of Northern Mexico and the Southwest.
Apropos of peyote, Minor writes (p.73) that the Lipans stayed near Zaragosa (in Coahuila, northern Mexico) because of its proximity to a hill where peyote grew in abundance. “The Western Lipans had been using peyote in their ceremonies since at least the 1780s, and as the Lipans were dispered out of Coahuila and into New Mexico, they brought with them their special peyote rituals.”
Apart from doing all the Wild West things Apache warriors did in those days, Chevato was a shaman and a “peyote singer,” singing special songs during the all-night ritual. Chevato’s great-grandfather was the first Lipan to make use of peyote in Mexico. Minor:
“Although the Mescaleros had used peyote in their religious ceremonies… it was the Lipan Apaches who created the form of ceremony practised by the Mescaleros by 1870 and the Comanches after 1875.”
Why 1875? The year prior to that the Quahada and other bands of Comanches had been defeated in a contest over “Anglos” taking the buffalo hunting grounds at The Second Battle of Adobe Walls, which was in the Texas Panhandle, prime buffalo hunting country. This defeat was the end of the end for the Comanches, and I believe that Quanah Parker’s adoption of the peyote ritual needs to be seen in this context.
So who was Quanah Parker? One
cannot write about Far West Texas without writing about Comanches, and
one cannot write about Comanches without writing about Quanah Parker,
and one cannot write about Quanah Parker without writing about the
Native American Church and peyote. So you can be sure, in my book I will
be writing about them.
It seems that everyone in Texas and Oklahoma already knows about Quanah Parker, the son of Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been kidnapped as a child from her family’s farm in Texas and raised as a Comanche.
(The John Wayne / Natalie Wood movie The Searchers is loosely based on the novel that was, in turn, loosely based on the story of Cynthia Ann Parker.)
Although
it has little to say about peyote, one of the best books on the
Comanches and Quanah Parker and an all-star crunchy fun read is S.C.
Gywnne’s Empire of the Summer Moon. Humongously recommended.
Quanah Parker in the first two-reel western ever filmed (in 1907): “The Bank Robbery”
(zip about peyote as far as I can tell)
Screenshot of Quanah Parker from “The Bank Robbery,” 1908
UPDATE September 2, 2016 Thanks to Gene Fowler, none other, who very kindly sent me the link, I have added to that blog post this link (embed rather) to “Amada of the Gardens” a fascinating documentary on peyotera Amada Cardenas (1904-2005).
ON THE SPREAD OF PEYOTE RELIGION From the article “The Native American Church” in the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, hosted by the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“While the exact origins of the Native American Church and its incorporation of peyote as a sacrament of communion are shrouded in oral history, Native believers generally agree that it began in the Southwest and worked its way up from Mexico. Among the Plains Indians, the Omahas, Poncas, Winnebagos, and Sioux readily accepted the belief system of the Native American Church.”
>>“With the Peyoteros” by Karen Olsson for The Texas Observer, March 2, 2001. Strong demand, plus fences and ranches plowed over for deer hunting, make finding peyote in the wild increasingly challenging.
“Indians from Mexico would come across hunting medicine plants and, above all, the cactus peyote. Six or seven of these men would walk up to the house wanting something to eat or water. The Indians were great beggars and always wanted you to give them anything that they could carry off. Sometimes they’d show me the different medicine plants they’d gathered and what each plant was for in curing. I learned lots from them and also from the old men and women that were my neighbors living in Mexico that came to see me at different times. One bunch of Indians came to see me from Oklahoma. They were looking for the cactus peyote. And as we talked, one said, ‘If you have faith, an ordinary rock could cure you.'”
PEYOTE TESTIMONY: YOUTUBERIE AND MORE
“Sacred Peyote”: a short documentary film about peyote and the Native American Church.
GERMAN-MEXICAN AMIGO GIVES TESTIMONY
My friend Hans Lens’ memoir. More about this anon.
GRINGOS GIVE TESTIMONYTara from “40BelowFruity” on her experience ingesting peyote
“Not
as easy experience… I was feeling a lot of nausea… deep-seated,
buried issues… I was resisting it… I started to become
overwhelmed… peyote brought [memories] to the surface…I felt like I
had been completely ripped apart and put together again… like a new
person, reborn… It has the power to heal people.”
“The Mind Divided” shares his reflections on his peyote experience and what he believes was the beautiful lesson: “Lighten up… embrace and enjoy life.”
Blogger Sara Brooke shares her experience with peyote in this post. A quote:
“It is conscious medicine, a consciousness that is far more intelligent than our own. It needs to be treated with respect and care and it honestly is something that isn’t for everyone. Psychologically, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually you have to be ready for it. It gives you an opportunity to face ALL parts of yourself, especially the shadow aspects. It is one of the most confronting, yet profound and worthwhile experiences I have ever had. I am eternally changed.”
(WHAT ABOUT CARLOS CASTANEDA? He did write about peyote in his several best-sellers. Alas, dude, not on my wavelength.)
AN ESOTERIC HYPOTHESIS
ABOUT PEYOTE WHICH I DO NOT INTEND TO TEST
My drug is coffee! My own
ventures into the esoteric have not been psychedelic but literary–
primarily by way of the Himalayas of reading I did for my most recent
book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. Indeed
I read so much esoterica that my sense of cognitive dissonance went
from geyser to sputter, then a little puddle, then, well… that dried
up. So now, no problemo, I could read about oh, say, aliens tokin’ peyote. That doesn’t mean I am saying anything about aliens tokin’ peyote. I am unaware of any such report.
Scion of a wealthy family in Coahuila, Francisco I. Madero was
the leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico from
1911-1913. I am often asked what he knew about indigenous shamanistic
traditions. I
did not find any evidence that Madero had any interest in or experience
with peyote nor, indeed, with indigenous healing traditions other than
an association, late in his short life, with his Masonic brother and
fellow Spiritist and doctor, the Mexican-German spy Dr Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, aka “Maestro Huiracocha,” author of a number of works, including El zodiaco de los incas en comparación con los aztecas, 1910.
Madero’s personal library
contained mainly French and Ango-American (some in the original, some
in Spanish translation) literature on Spiritualism, Spiritism,
Theosophy, hypnotherapy, French occultism, the Bhagavad-Gita, adventures
into Tibet, and the like. His work that I translated, Manual espiritaof 1911, references many of these works.
Educated
in France, where he discovered Spiritism and other esoteric ideas then
in vogue, Madero would have been familiar with the Hindu concept, as
conveyed to the West through the writings of various Theosophists, of
the human body as having interpenetrating “energy bodies” and specific
energy vortices known as “chakras.” Under this paradigm, my hypothesis–
and take this with a truckload of salt, I am not sure I have a clue
what I am talking about– is that ingesting peyote removes certain
neuro-filters in the pineal gland and actives a chakra so that one can clearly perceive blockages and other auric debris, and one’s own emotional body. Which chakra might that be? Heart– I guess. Just a guess.
Continuing
to follow my understanding of what could have been Madero’s
hypothetical paradigm for understanding peyote, there may also be one or
more conscious and intelligent astral entities / spirit guides
associated with the plant. This concept is eloquently articulated in
Eliot Cowan’s Plant Spirit Medicine.
Most
modern doctors and scientists would focus on peyote’s botanical,
chemical, medicinal pharmacological aspects, and specifically, their
measurable effect on the brain and body. Several chapters are devoted to
these topics in Anderson’s Peyote: The Divine Cactus.
